The young woman's manner was still careless.
"Oh, of course; but young people do not feel such attachments much; it isn't natural. We talk a great deal about sentimental youth, but I think it is the old who are sentimental, don't you? Auntie was an illustration of that. She had the greatest quantity of old duds that she carried about with her wherever she went, just because they were keepsakes, souvenirs, and all that sort of thing. They were of no real value, you know, the most of them, and some were mere rubbish. I had the greatest time when we were packing to go abroad; she wanted to lug ever so much of that stuff with her! I just had to set my foot down that it couldn't be done; and it was fortunate that I did, as things turned out. We had a horrid time getting packed; if Erskine had had all that rubbish to see to with the rest, I don't know what would have become of him. I don't believe he has sentimental notions; he is too sensible. He ought to be in the city; that is the place for a man to rise; and you want him to rise, don't you? Aren't you ambitious for him? I am. I want him to stand at the very head of his profession. I tell him that if he doesn't, it will not be for lack of brains, but on account of a morbid conscience. Don't you think he is inclined to be over-conscientious, sometimes? What an odd, old-fashioned plant that is beyond the rose arbor; it looks like a weed."
She had a curious fashion of mixing the important and the trivial in a single sentence. The mother, whose nerves quivered with her desire to answer that remark about over-conscientiousness, restrained herself and explained the plant that looked like a weed.
"It is a very choice variety of begonia and has a lovely blossom in its season. It is the first thing that Erskine planted quite by himself. He was a tiny boy then, with yellow curls."
The mother's voice trembled. A vision of her boy in his childish beauty, in the long-ago days when he was all her own, came back to her, bringing with it a strange new pang.
The wife laughed carelessly.
"And you have kept it all these years, ugly as it is, on that account? I told you it was old people who were sentimental."
Mrs. Burnham turned abruptly away, murmuring something about household duties. She went to the kitchen and gave the cook some directions that she did not need; then went swiftly to her room and closed and locked her door. Then she passed through to her sitting room, the door of which was opposite her son's, and stood always open, inviting his entrance, and closed and locked it. She had a feeling that she must be alone. More alone than closed and locked doors would make her. She must shut out something that had come in unawares and taken hold of her life. But could she shut it out, or get away from it?
"I must pray," she said aloud, clasping both hands over her throbbing forehead. "I must pray a great deal. I am not alone; God is with me; and nothing dreadful has happened, or is about to happen. There is nothing and there must be nothing but peace and joy in our home. I must be quiet and sensible and not sentimental. Oh, I must not be sentimental at all!"
She laughed a little over that word—the kind of laugh that does not help one; but it was followed immediately by tears, and they relieved a little of the strain.